English  Literature

                                          POETRY by THOMAS STEARN ELIOT  

ABOUT   THE AUTHOR

     T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Harvard University. After an  additional year of education in Paris, he  went to Oxford University and then back to Harvard. In 1914, he moved to and  settled in England, marrying an English  woman and working as a teacher and a banker. Here he met the American  modernist  poet Ezra Pound who encouraged Eliot’s writing. Eliot’s first publication,  ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’  established him as an important modernist poet. Eliot began working at Faber and Faber  publishing company, eventually  becoming a director. He became a naturalized British citizen in

1927. 

      His  poems focused on the disillusionment of the post-WW1 younger generation with the conventions and  values (both social and Victorian Era. In his late thirties, he   literary) of the converted into Orthodox Christianity. He  greatly influenced the literary taste of his time with the promoting views that were  founded in religious and social criticism.                 The poetry he wrote in his late years includes  ‘Four Quartets’and ‘Ash Wednesday’.  Then he wrote on literary criticism, and social criticisms include ‘The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’           , ‘The Sacred Wood, Notes towards the  Definition of Culture’, and ‘After Strange Gods ’. 

      Eliot also wrote the famous plays that  include ‘The Cocktail Part’, ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ , and ‘The Family Reunion’.       The verse drama ‘Murder in the

Cathedral’ recounts the martyrdom of

 Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. _{The work was first performed in the}

Chapter House at Canterbury Cathedral,  only steps from where Becket’s murder took place.

      In 1948, Eliot received the Nobel Prize

for literature. He remarried later in life, and on his death in 1965, his second wife  worked to compile and edit his papers  and manuscript drafts of his work. Eliot’s ashes are interred at East Coker Church, a  small village in southwest England that  was home to his ancestors. He also is honored with a commemorative stone in  Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey.              

  TASK A.  Read the text about the author and answer  the following questions:

1.    How  important  for his literary career was  Eliot’s  family  background?

2.    What  were  his  other  interests  besides  literature?

3.    What was his contribution to the periodicals?

4.    When and how did he become a British citizen? 5.   What are his most famous works?     

TASK B.  Read the text about the                   poem and answer                    the questions:

1.   What was the purpose of the journey        of the Magi to Bethlehem? 2.   What is the structure of the poem?

3.                     What was the meaning of the birth of        Christ to the wise men?

4.                     Why is ‘The Journey of the Magi’ called         the  metaphorical  poem?   What  does  it         represent?  

THE JOURNEY 

OF THE MAGI

ABOUT THE POEM

    'The Journey of the Magi' is T.S. Eliot’s dramatic monologue that focuses upon the famous biblical story of the three kings from the East travelling to Bethlehem to pay homage to the baby Jesus. He imagines one of the kings giving an account of the journey. It is a metaphorical poem, representing both birth and death, renewal and spiritual rebirth.        Within the Christian tradition, the journey of the Magi is associated with celebration and wonder and gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. However, this seems like an arduous journey. The first twenty lines suggest that the kings had ‘a hard time’ of it.

In line s twenty-one to thirty-one, the magi arrive at their destination. Given what we know of the life and death of Christ, this section shows the significance of some of the images such as ‘the three trees on the

low sky’ and the hands ‘dicing for pieces of silver’.

In the last twelve lines we learn that the kings were deeply affected and changed by their experience. The birth of Christ heralds the start of a new order and new truth, and yet the kings have to return to their kingdoms and to ‘an alien people clutching their gods’.

by Thomas Eliot

THE JOURNEY OF THE MAGI

‘A cold coming we had of it,  Just the worst time of the year  For a journey, and such a long journey: 

The ways deep and the weather sharp, 

The very dead of winter.’ 

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,  Lying down in the melting snow. 

There were times when we regretted 

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,  And the silken girls bringing sherbet. 

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling 

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,  

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,  And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly  And the villages dirty and charging high prices: 

A hard time we had of it. 

At the end we preferred to travel all night, 

Sleeping in snatches, 

With the voices singing in our ears, saying  That this was all folly. 

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, 

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; 

With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness, 

And three trees on the low sky, 

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. 

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,  Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,  And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. 

But there was no information, and so we continued  And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon  Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. 

All this was a long time ago, I remember, 

And I would do it again, but set down 

This set down 

This: were we led all that way for 

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, 

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,  But had thought they were different; this Birth was  Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.  We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, 

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,  With an alien people clutching their gods. 

I should be glad of another death.

1927